THE FEAR OF GETTING IT ‘WRONG’ IS KILLING YOUR ACCENT WORK

You might have read my last few blogs and found yourself thinking, This is all lovely, Maeve, but how on earth do I apply it to accent work? 

I’ve been chatting a lot about shrugging off people pleasing and showing up truthfully in both your life and art.

And I’d forgive you if you’ve found yourself asking, But surely accent work is all about getting it right? Getting the pronunciation right? The rhythm right? The intonation right? 

But I’d counter it with, What on earth does it mean to get it right? What is right? Who gets to decide what’s right?

Look.

You can’t please everyone. 

Especially the armchair experts. 

You know the ones; sat at home (or, indeed, in casting offices) critiquing the accents they hear on the TV (and in self tapes).  No matter how hard you try, you’ll never please them. At least, you’ll certainly never manage to please them all.  

Because each and every expert, in armchairs (and office chairs) up and down the country and across the globe, will be listening with a completely different and immensely personal notion of what is right.  So where would you even begin in trying to please them all?

Besides, it’s not your job to please them.

Your job is to tell the story.

And you’ll do that best by…

1. Getting Specific 

Do you find yourself thinking of accent as something you can categorise or generalise? That approach may well be aiding those creating the casting breakdowns but it certainly won’t be serving you.

No matter how often they’re requested, General or Standard accents don’t really exist. 

Aim for a General or Standard accent and you’ll end up with a generalised, bog standard performance. 

Aim for a Scottish accent, an Edinburgh accent, or any accent ‘of a place’, without taking the time to home in on a reference voice that suits the given circumstances of your story, that suits your character, and you’ll most likely find yourself playing the concept or idea of an accent. And how well do you think that’ll serve the story? 

How about aiming to create the accent of your character instead of that of a place or casting brief?

Why not focus on specificity instead of generality? 

I promise you, if you get into the habit of finding a vocal reference to suit your character and focus on building from that, you’ll wonder how you ever came at accents any other way (answer: probably not very well).

Focusing your attention on a particular vocal model will ensure that your work remains specific and rooted in authenticity instead of some vague notion of what the accent ‘should’ sound like. 

You’ll stop worrying about pleasing every armchair expert because, unless they too have spent time getting to know your vocal model, they can’t be experts on it can they? 

Finally free from that futile tyranny you’ll be able to focus on what really matters… 

2. Getting Curious 

Curiosity; the most essential ingredient in accent learning. 

Did you think I was going to say pronunciation? Or oral posture? Maybe you thought I’d suggest prosody (rhythm and intonation)? 

Of course those things are important. Hell, those are the very things that I want you to start getting curious about! 

But the curiosity piece is the golden thread that pulls it all together. 

Curiosity affects how you approach the work. How you listen to your vocal model. And the quality and intentionality of your listening matters. 

Are you listening to understand and connect or are you listening for fear of getting it wrong? Because, believe me, the difference will be coming across in your work.

Great accent work is about so much more than just the whats: What does it sound like? What are the key pronunciation, postural and prosodic differences? 

If you focus only on whats, the work becomes about trying to achieve something fixed, about getting it ‘right’. And we’ve already established that doesn’t work. 

Great accent work also considers the how: How does it feel? How do they connect? How do they (tend to) communicate that thing? How does it feel to communicate that thing that way compared to my usual way? 

Great accent work doesn’t just ask what’s the intention? It also asks how is it realised? 

A great vocal model is so much more than just a reference point for the key pronunciation, postural and prosodic differences (although it will, of course, provide on all those fronts).  

A great vocal model has the potential to serve as an open door into your character. A way into showing up in the world as they do, instead of as you do. 

But only if you allow curiosity to run the show rather than a misplaced fear of getting it wrong.

Listening with a genuine spirit of enquiry grants you the freedom to splash about in a kind of empathetic, conscious mimicry, a kind of ‘listening of the body’, which, through repetition and continued exploration, will eventually lead you to genuine connection through unconscious embodiment.

Listening with your whole self, instead of only with your people pleasing self, opens the door to the true power and possibility of voice and accent in the architecture of character. 

The wonderful Anna Deavere Smith beautifully summed up this process when she said, “Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again. When I was a kid, my grandfather said that "if you say a word often enough, it becomes you."

Which leads you to…

3. Feeling, Breathing and Communicating through the New (to you) Parameters 

If the ability to show up in our own skin is the foundation of great acting, how on earth can we achieve this when acting in an accent?!

Showing up as yourself can feel incredibly challenging when acting in your own accent. So attempting to do so when acting within the parameters of a new accent often feels like a mega challenge. In fact, you might think the notion of showing up as yourself in an accent that’s not your own a contradiction in terms. 

But, remember, “Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” 

I whipped out this legendary Meisner quote last time too. Then I was particularly interested in the truthfully part but today I want to draw your attention to the imaginary circumstances bit.

Because that’s how I want you to start viewing the accent element of prepping for a role, character or casting: as simply another set of given circumstances with which to deal.  

It is totally possible to find the freedom to connect to your instincts when acting in an accent but you have to learn to act on those instincts from within the parameters of the given circumstances that the accent provides, i.e. the new (to you!) habits of pronunciation, posture, prosody (rhythm & intonation) and people (what I like to call the culture of communication)*

You want gain ownership of these new habits in such a way that they become fully embodied. You want them to be so firmly rooted in the musculature of your being that its as though they have always lived there. 

And you achieve this by continued curiosity, conscious mimicry, embodied play and experimentation.  

By exploring how each and every element of the accent affects how it feels to show up in the world.

By getting curious about how it feels to use your body and mouth in this different way. To take up space in this different way. 

And considering the impact that might have on the story. On the character.

By exploring it so much and so deeply that it eventually stops feeling different at all. It starts to feel like the only way to communicate in these circumstances. The only way for this story. 

You’ve donned your character’s jacket and are moving through the world as them. Feeling, breathing and communicating as them.

It’s acting shiz.  Because the accent shiz only exists as part of the acting shiz.  

There isn’t really any other way.

When your job is to be of service story.  

And if you’re still holding firmly to the idea that your job is to get it ‘right’, there’s not a lot I can do to help you.  

Except tell you that you may as well give up on the story and the acting shiz then - because ‘right’ will never please them.

*Shout out to Dudley Knight for his fabulously alliterative 4 Ps which are a cornerstone of my work.

P.S. Don’t know where to start with a vocal model? Baffled by the 4 Ps? My signature, build on each other, Empower > Embody > Connect accent coaching programmes are designed to take you from not knowing where to start with acting in an accent to feeling confident, knowledgable and skilled enough to tackle them on your own.